Tag: Titles

I bet you were not expecting me to use the Spanish Inquisition to help you write better headings. Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition and I’m guessing that it got your attention, or you would not have read this far. The Spanish Inquisition have several ways to help you improve your headings. Amongst their weaponry are such diverse elements as:

Fear

Fear the reaction of your readers. Counting your arguments is a good and powerful way to bring a point across, but these days everybody’s doing it and readers are starting to be really annoyed with yet another heading like, “Seven reasons why you should take up running”, “Five reasons why you should not eat bread”, “Three ways to improve your sales”, “Ten reasons why running is bad for you”, “Six reasons why you should avoid annoying your readers with boring headings”.

Surprise

Surprise your readers with a more interesting kind of heading. Something they were not expecting. You want to be read? Be different. Stand out from the crowd. Do something new. Boldly combine ideas that no one has combined before.

Ruthless efficiency

Use as few words as you can, but no fewer than you need. Headings are important because readers use them as a selection instrument. Am I going to read this blog post or not, is what they’re asking themselves, and if they don’t understand the heading they won’t read your post. Or your technical report. Or your scientific paper. So KISS: Keep It Short and Simple.

Fanatical devotion

Do not stop revising until you’ve got the perfect heading. This can take a long time. Consider leaving it alone for a couple of days if you’re not satisfied yet. Don’t throw away previous versions, you may want to revert back to them later on. Personally, I wrote approximately 20 headings for this post before I decided on this one and I still have them somewhere.

Nice red uniforms

If you are writing for a newspaper or a weblog you can do pretty much whatever you want with your headings (and even here we see a lot of people stealing and copying each other’s ideas, which is boring and which is why am writing this post). At work, uniformity may be expected more often (Look! We’ve been doing it like this for ages so it must be a good idea!). And even if we know that it’s the heading that stands out from the rest that will catch people’s eye, not all your headings can always be spectacularly different from the ones written by your colleagues. Some of you have company templates that you have to use and often a particular style is prescribed. But even if you have to do what everybody else is doing and they make you wear that uniform, at least try to make it a red one.

Writers who fail to take this advice seriously will be considered blasphemers and will be poked with soft cushions, with all the stuffing at one end. And if they don’t confess their blasphemy they will have to sit in a comfy chair until teatime.

Yes, there is one. A dark side of PowerPoint I mean. It can be a tad dominant (like Vader). In fact, some presentations look as if the speaker has thought only about what they could show in PowerPoint, instead of what they wanted to say.

All the books I know that deal with preparing presentations say that you should first identify your audience and goals, and then generate content and structure. Creating visuals comes after that and should be one of the last things you do. And yet I see a shocking number of students who, when asked to prepare a presentation, immediately start PowerPoint, Keynote or even Prezi. This is beginning to annoy me, so I asked myself: what would happen if I told my students that the projector was broken, and they would have to improvise?

I tried this a while ago: they improvised.

For this particular lesson I had asked my students to prepare a presentation in groups of two, using slides, just like they always did. This time when they came in, however, I told them that there was a problem with the projector and that they would have to come up with a creative solution. I gave the group 15 minutes to prepare. The results were not only educational, they were spectacular.

One student used her partner as a prop. She explained the aerodynamics of speed skating and made him assume different speed skating positions to show what she meant. She was thrilled to have a movable 3D model on a 1:1 scale to help her make things clear. Between the lines it became audibly clear, by the way, that maintaining a certain knee angle for a long time is not necessarily very comfortable.

Another student made three people from the audience perform as passenger aircraft , flying from Amsterdam to New York in formation (arms wide, propeller sounds, pilot banter), slowly moving through the room together. They managed to land safely one by one.

Some groups found out that the slides that they had made were pointless and that the presentation worked just as well, or better, without them. They certainly noticed that the audience were listening quite intently to what they were saying.

The thing is, not only did we prove that life without slides actually exists, but also everybody in that group still remembers exactly all the presentations we had that day. Of course my spectacularly innovative didactics may have played a role, but I like to think that most of the presentations simply had more impact than they would have had if they had used slides.

Of course PowerPoint is not a useless tool; it can show in a flash what would otherwise take you hours to explain. But it is just that: a tool. One of many. The presentation is not what you show, the presentation is you, and there are several moments in any presentation when you as the presenter may want the audience’s full attention, without being distracted by PowerPoint. Then you might use that most wonderful of features in PowerPoint: letter B on your keyboard.

Hitting letter B will make the screen go black, which will make everybody focus on you (I call it B for Bob). Anything you say now will be consumed like hamburgers by a starving man. Trust me and try this; and I promise that the power of the dark slide will be with you. Always.

Oh, and you should have seen the look on my students’ faces when, after our class had finished, the next group came in and started the projector, which was working perfectly well…

What would your readers say if you put the conclusion of your report in its title?

A: Booh! Spoiler alert!

B: Aha!

I have asked that question in my writing groups for years and every time a few of my students answer ‘A’. Apparently they think that argumentation should come before conclusion. And of course it does – when you are doing the research and the designing. But does that mean that you should keep your conclusions secret until your reader has read the rest of the report? I think not!

Mind you: I am not talking about scientific papers or essays here. But your report should give the most efficient representation of your conclusions and argumentation possible, and that means that your reader should be able to see what your main conclusion is. Immediately. On the front page.

A title like: “An investigation into algae as an energy source” forces your poor readers to find the Summary or the Conclusion section and read until they come to the relevant bit, which they will find annoying. You don’t want your readers to find you annoying. Really. It’s bad for business.

Instead, write something like: “Three reasons why algae will never replace fossile fuel”, or: “Why algae are likely to be the biofuel of the future”. If you want (you do), you can combine them into a title and a subtitle (or primary and secondary, if you are American) like this:

Three reasons why algae will replace fossile fuel within five years.

An investigation into algae as an energy source.

Or:

Algare are not an acceptable alternative for fossile fuel.

Research shows algae are too slow to grow, expensive and inefficient.

I have said this in previous posts, but you may not (yet) have read them all (you should). People who read technical reports professionally don’t have a lot of time to read. Do them a favour: don’t waste their time by keeping your main findings a secret.

When you divide your text into subsections you will have to make your reader understand what you are doing and what you are doing it for. This means that all sections at first and second level that you split up into subsections get an introduction.

Third level sections usually don’t get an introduction as they are not split up. You would get a fourth level, which is really too much of a good thing. The example below shows a first level section that is subdivided into two second level sections in which two systems are compared. Notice that Chapter 3.1 is not split up into fragments and therefore does not have an introduction.

Please bear in mind that in reality you would never call them system A and B. Give them names that explains how they are different form each other.

Chapter 3: Comparison: System B performs better than system A

Now that we have established that system A and system B both yield satisfactory results, it is time to see which system meets the requirements best. Chapter 3.1 shows how both systems compare on durability and maintainability, chapter 3.2 will show how they cope in extreme situations.

3.1: Both systems are durable and easily maintainable

According to Johnson (2015), System A was found to be extremely durable. Even after 15 years of non-stop service the accuracy remained …. This was confirmed in several experiments (e.g. Post 2011, Williams 2012). System B, likewise, has proved to be ….

Maintenance of both systems was different only in minor aspects. System A requires slightly more time for …., but his is negligible because …

3.2: System B is more reliable under extreme conditions

Even though both systems function similarly under most circumstances, some remarkable differences came to light when we tested them in extreme temperatures. Both systems were used to measure X at 12 different temperatures and it was here where system B proved to be … Chapter 3.2.1 will first show the results of …., chapter 3.2.2 describes …

3.2.1: Low temperatures

Our measurements show that at temperatures below 100K, system A started to show …. This means that an extra insulation …., which will lead to ….

3.2.2: High temperatures

The last two measurements, at 500 and 600K respectively, show a marked difference ….

3.3: Conclusion: system B will be more reliable in future deployments

In the current situation, system A and B will both work equally well, as the temperatures at which they are used are moderate. However, as the situations, and with these the temperatures at which the systems will be subjected, will become more extreme in the next 3 or 4 years ….

(Do you see, by the way, how all the headings together form a kind of summary?)